Forget Weather, Kenyan GDP Threatened By “Marauding Monkeys”

In developed countries (like America) with sophisticated capital markets, complex adaptive supply chains, and experienced PhD economists running the economy, it is the weather that is to blame when data disappoints and throws cold water on a status-quo-maintaining narrative. But in Kenya, there is a force far greater than Mother Nature when it comes to potentially destroying the economy… the vervet monkey!!

A vervet monkey triggered a nationwide blackout in Kenya after it fell onto a transformer at one of the nation’s main hydroelectric plants, Kenya Electricity Generating Co. said. As Bloomberg reports,

The monkey climbed on to the roof of the Gitaru facility and may have been thrown off balance and onto a transformer, tripping the equipment and causing an overload on other machines at the plant, according to a statement e-mailed by the Nairobi-based power generator, known as KenGen. The animal survived the incident, it said.

The primate accessed the plant even though KenGen’s facilities are secured by electric fences designed to keep out “marauding wild animals,” the company said.

KenGen supplies 80 percent of the electricity in East Africa’s biggest economy.

The incident resulted in the loss of more than 180 megawatts from the plant, setting off the blackout, according to the utility. Supply has since been restored and power-generating units are operating normally, it said.

Perhaps it is time for Janet to import some Kenyan monkeys (if she hasn’t already) because we suspect we are going to need something other than weather to explain this…

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